The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 4

Julio Jones dominated the Panthers for 300 yards receiving. Who else was a star in Week 4?

Week 4 games aren't over yet, so maybe the title of this article is a little misleading. It should read something like The 20 Best Offensive Players From the Thursday and Sunday Games in Week 4.

That just doesn't flow all that well.

As you know, we like math here at numberFire. Our algorithms help tell a better story about sports -- they're able to dig through the nonsense, helping us look at things that matter on the court, field or rink.

With football, we love our Net Expected Points (NEP) metric, which measures the number of points a player adds (or loses) to his team versus what he's expected to add. Rather than counting statistics like yards, touchdowns and receptions, NEP looks at down-and-distance situations and field position and relates these instances to history. When a player outperforms what's happened in the past, he sees a positive expected points value on the play. When he doesn't, his expected points gained on the play is negative. All of these little instances add up, then, to be a player's Net Expected Points total.

Using a formula that compares individual single-game performance to history, the numberFire Live platform takes this Net Expected Points formula and assigns a rating to a player's performance. Each week, that's what we'll show here -- the 20 best ratings from the Thursday and Sunday games.

Here are Week 4's results:

Player

Position

Rating

Julio Jones

WR

100

Matt Ryan

QB

99

A.J. Green

WR

96

Ben Roethlisberger

QB

96

Isaiah Crowell

RB

96

Ezekiel Elliott

RB

95

T.J. Yeldon

RB

94

Le'Veon Bell

RB

94

John Brown

WR

93

Michael Crabtree

WR

93

Matt Jones

RB

90

DeMarco Murray

RB

87

Dontrelle Inman

WR

87

LeSean McCoy

RB

83

Emmanuel Sanders

WR

82

Russell Wilson

QB

82

Tyrod Taylor

QB

82

Brian Hoyer

QB

79

Will Fuller

WR

79

Greg Olsen

TE

79

- Julio Jones and Matt Ryan had a day for the record books, as Jones racked up 300 receiving yards, and Ryan threw for more than 500 passing yards. Ryan posted a Passing NEP of 27.95, tops of the week. Jones' 25.27 Reception NEP was the only mark above A.J. Green's 13.19.

- Trailing the Atlanta Falcons' duo and tied with Green in performance score were two more AFC North players: Ben Roethlisberger and Isaiah Crowell. Roethlisberger accounted for a Passing NEP of 22.31, making him one of two passers with a mark above Brian Hoyer's 14.98. Crowell led the league in Rushing NEP with a mark of 6.54 on his 15 attempts.

- Ezekiel Elliott, Le'Veon Bell, and T.J. Yeldon posted efficient days as well. Bell's 5.98 Rushing NEP was second to Crowell's 6.54, and Elliott's 5.56 placed him comfortably in third over the rest of the league. Yeldon managed just 2.27 Rushing NEP in London, but he boosted the Jacksonville Jaguars' expected scoring by 4.72 points with his 4 catches.

- Two receivers from out west broke out, as John Brown led all receivers with 16 targets in Week 4, leading to a Reception NEP of 12.08. Michael Crabtree hauled in 3 touchdowns for 11.89 Reception NEP on 12 targets.